It’s hard, very tiring. And now I don’t think I’ll be able to leave either that side of the city or the other. We tried yesterday to transfer the whole hospital towards Damascus but we were stopped on the road; there were people killed…I’ve been here now for about three weeks; I am very tired. I thought I was going to go home tomorrow and I had organised a means of transport. But it seems there is no longer a chance of getting out…

It’s starting to look like Beirut during the war. Cars are on fire, buildings on fire, holes in the walls of houses and lots, lots of injured- sometimes Free Syria Army fighters but mainly civilians- men, women and children. They are not managing to evacuate the most vulnerable people…These men are very brave and believe victory is possible. I do too, but it is claiming so many human lives. The neighbourhood is being almost constantly bombarded.

The humanitarian situation, said Beres, was nearing disaster.

There are not many anaesthetics left and if more don’t arrive secretly from abroad it’s going to get difficult…There is very little left: not much food, not much water, and there is no more electricity to pump. There are generators, but no one has any more fuel to power them.

8.44am: (all times GMT) Welcome to Middle East Live. Today’s press coverage of Syria is dominated by the killing of Sunday Times journalist Marie Colvin. Despite the international outrage the killing provoked, the shelling of Homs appears to have intensified.

Local sources said that seven opposition activists were caught and killed as they tried to take medical aid to the journalists, but that could not be confirmed.It appears that the building was targeted deliberately. Syrian activists said that it was hit by more than ten shells, and last week its top floor was destroyed by rockets.

Marie Colvin had a knack of finding her way to places where other journalists had not been, getting there first and staying when others had long gone. Colleagues would arrive in conflict zones to find Colvin already in situ, usually hunched over her laptop or talking urgently into her mobile phone to one of her sources from her vast contacts book.

In Maarat Numan, strategically situated on the main highway between Syria’s two major cities, Aleppo and Damascus, rebels loosely associated with the Free Syrian Army, an insurgent group based on the Turkish side of the border, are holding their own against security forces.

Rebels appear to control most residential districts, where images of the tricolor opposition flag are spray-painted on countless walls. But military checkpoints and carefully placed snipers control two main thoroughfares intersecting in town. President Bashar Assad’s government seems intent on holding the two main roads and occasionally firing into rebel neighborhoods, driving people indoors.

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